What a client meeting really costs a recruitment agency

Every recruitment agency owner I speak to knows their average fee. Very few know what a client meeting costs them to get. That second number decides whether your business development is working, so here it is, worked out four ways, with the sources underneath.

Option one: hire a BDM

The Indeed UK average salary for a business development manager is £42,625. Add employer NI and pension and you are at roughly £4,100 a month, before commission, data or anything they need to do the job.

Bridge Group's 2025 benchmark puts the median at about ten held meetings a month once someone is fully ramped. That makes each meeting roughly £410.

Two things that number leaves out. Ramp time is around three months, so the first quarter's meetings cost far more. And when a good BDM leaves, the relationships usually leave with them.

Option two: run ads

WordStream's 2025 Google Ads benchmarks for business services put a form fill on recruitment terms at £100 to £150 at the upper end. Most of those never become a conversation.

At 10 to 20% of leads turning into a meeting, and with a 15 to 20% management fee on top, a meeting with an actual decision-maker comes out at £500 to £1,200. The day the budget stops, so does the phone.

Option three: pay per appointment

Published UK and US pricing from appointment-setting agencies sits at £300 to £600 an appointment, in aggregate. What you usually get is a reply handed over, on one or two channels, rarely with a phone call behind it.

Option four: us

We run LinkedIn on your team's profiles, plus email, text and a British caller who rings every interested prospect within 24 hours. On one LinkedIn seat at three to five qualified meetings a month, that models out at £98 to £197 a qualified meeting.

That is a model, not a promise. It comes from our own three-account campaign, and your market and your offer decide the result. One plan, one price, agreed on your 1-to-1.

Work out your own number

You do not need our figures to do this. Take what you spend on business development in a month, all of it, and divide by the meetings with hiring managers that actually happened. Then ask how many of those meetings it takes to win a client, and what one placement is worth.

If one placement pays for three months of meetings, the question stops being cost and becomes volume.

Sources

Hire: Indeed UK average BDM salary £42,625 plus employer NI and pension, read August 2026; ten held meetings a month is the Bridge Group 2025 SDR median. Ads: WordStream Google Ads benchmarks 2025, business services, at 10 to 20% lead to meeting plus a management fee. Agencies: published UK and US pricing, aggregate, September 2026. Ours: modelled on one LinkedIn seat at three to five qualified meetings a month, read November 2026.

Bring your average fee to a 1-to-1 and we run your numbers live.